Matthias Pfefferle has introduced a WordPress plugin that supports crossposting from your WordPress enabled website to a Bluesky account.
You can get the plug in here, or install through your plugin manager within WordPress: https://wordpress.org/plugins/share-on-bluesky/
The plug in is fairly simple with not a lot of explanation. On initial set up I found the field names to be poorly identified and it took a few tries to get the right settings before cross posting could happen. I will explain below exactly how to configure the plugin to get your WordPress posts zipping across to Bluesky.
i) In “Bluesky Domain” you will enter the instance address you wish to cross post to. For 99% of people at the moment this will be https://bsky.social. If you have a different instance, aka an AT Protocol server not managed by Bluesky, you will use the address of that server.
ii) In the Bluesky “Identifier” field, you will enter your username aka the username you use to login to Bluesky or your particular AT Protocol instance.
iii) In the password field you will enter an app password that you generate in your Bluesky settings (or settings of your AT Protocol instance). You can generate the password by going to https://bsky.app/settings/app-passwords and clicking “generate app password”. Once the password is created make a note of it before clicking away, as once created you will not be able to view it again.
NOTE: I have not tested this on a non-Bluesky server instance, so mileage and settings may differ (or may not work). But this is verified working on my installation for Bluesky, using WordPress 6.7.1 and PHP 7.4.33
And it’s as simple as that!
Sample username used below
Australian and New Zealand Twitter users found this morning that their twitter access was suffering timeouts and failures posting and loading threads. This is reportedly limited to Australia and New Zealand and not a world wide outage.
Users are facing slow page loads, as well as messages such as the following:
Guardian columnist Van Badham confirms to Twitter user “Kate” that they are also having problems:
Internet services in Australia are otherwise operating normally.
There’s no evidence of a connection yet, but on Christmas Eve, Musk shut down the Sacramento data centre, one of three data centres that serve twitter webpages.
More outage information is available at https://aussieservicedown.com/status/twitter
In case you have been living under a rock, or live in the alternative reality of facebook world, or have a good dose of selfcare and live more in the real world than social media, you will have noticed that twitter is melting down at the moment. Or more precisely, it’s new owner is melting down.
There’s a whole story there so I’ll leave that for another day. But there’s heaps of info online about that if you want to look into it. The upshot is that millions of people have been migrating from Twitter to other social media platforms. A large swathe of those have been attracted to the promises of Mastodon and platforms of that ilk, for the promise of corporate manipulation free social media – no ads, no algorithms, and since the recent Twitter takeover, the appeal of no inexplicable suspensions and arbitrary rule making.
The Fediverse: A Viable Alternative to Corporate Owned Social Media
So firstly let’s address the Pachyderm in the room. Specifically the Mastodon and related Fediverse species. With the imminent demise (some gleefully, if prematurely, predict) of Twitter, people have been flocking to a till now little known social media alternative called Mastodon. Mastodon is the most predominant of a range of social media platforms grouped under the taxonomy of open source interoperable social media platforms. What this means is that members of different platforms can follow, like and share content to and from other platforms that share the same protocol. In practice this would be like if you could follow twitter accounts on your facebook, or share your instagram pics to twitter.
There are a few different protocols but the one that has gained the most ground and has the most mature suite of features is ActivityPub. An example of platforms that use ActivityPub include Mastodon, Pixelfed, Peertube (respectively modelled loosely on Twitter, Instagram and Youtube). Collectively, ActivityPub platforms are called The Fediverse.
Some existing social media and web based companies are also planning to implement ActivityPub which would bring them into the Fediverse: Tumblr, Flickr, Mozilla (so far). There are also plugins to bring your WordPress site into the Fediverse. Then there are a bunch of other smaller platforms. ActivityPub is free and open source and anyone with the skill and inclination can design a platform that utilises ActivityPub.
You don’t have to design your own platform though to run your own social media service. Most of the platforms are open source and free; for example anyone can install their own Mastodon server. A Mastodon server (or pixelfed, hubzilla etc) is called an ‘Instance’, and is the end user’s ‘home’ on the Fediverse; when you join the Fediverse, you choose an instance to sign up to.
Anyone on any instance that uses ActivityPub can talk to, follow and be followed by anyone on any other Instance. There’s one caveat here; because anyone can run an instance, and because some instances operate under rules and moderation practices that other instances find questionable, an instance may decide to ‘defederate’ from a given instance. For example Trump’s social media network Truth.Social uses the ActivityPub protocol. In fact, it’s a Mastodon instance. However almost all other Mastodon and ActivityPub platforms have defederated Truth.Social.
So while most Instances are part of a global federation, there are examples of Instances which been excluded from this general federation. For most intents and purposes, most people in refuge from Twitter joining Mastodon or other ActivityPub instances will be fine with not having access to the few defederated instances.
Because there are many providers of Instances, none of which rely on any central authority, the network is decentralised. Communities can grow up around a given Fediverse instance without any corporate oversight, without ads or ad targeting, and without algorithms dictating who’s posts you see. Communities can manage their own moderation. Communities can federate with as many or as few other Instances as they like. They can potentially federate only with Instances that share common goals or interests. Or they can federate with everyone.
There is still room for improvement in ActivityPub and the many available platforms. Maybe something will take over Mastodon as the most popular Fediverse platform. But for now the pachyderm is leading the charge.
So How Does One Get Involved in the Fediverse?
I will follow up this article with an in depth explanation of how to join the Fediverse and what to expect when you do. But short answer is, join an instance that roughly matches your interests.
These two are a good place to start if you are keen to get going. However I advice doing some research first (or wait for my next article) before leaping in:
If you want a twitter like interface, try Mastodon: https://joinmastodon.org/#getting-started
If you want an Instagram like interface try Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.org/servers
Good luck, and happy hunting!
The recent drug raid in Northern NSW town of Nimbin, the culmination of a 6 month investigation dubbed Operation Cuppa, was revealed to media on the day as netting $1 million dollars worh of cannabis, $50,000 cash, as well as finding mdma, ice, guns, a tazer and a slingshot.
This all on the surface seems to point to the Gold Coast criminal organisation that Police want the public to think is behind the ‘Laneway Boys’ who sell cannabis to locals, tourists and medicinal marijuana seekers.
But speaking to locals reveals a very different story. While three of the men charged were from Queensland, the majority of the ‘laneway boys’ as they are known in Nimbin, are locals, even respected in some quarters as being responsible for keeping ice dealers out of the township.
The reported mdma and ice found in the raids has not been assigned a cash value, (unlike the cannabis which has been given a street value of one million dollars), which indicates that these drugs were personal use only. Because the police cast a large net in the raids, these drugs could have belonged to anyone and it is disingenuous to portray this as evidence of hard drug dealing or hard drug syndications. Likewise with the weapons claimed to have been found: numerous locals who know the men under charges, have confirmed that only one gun was found and it wasn’t associated with the laneway area but was found in one of the residences raided. No firearms charges have been laid so it can only be assumed the firearm was legitmately licenced.
While there is still a lot of controversy in the township over the drug dealing that occurs in the laneway, and whether it extends to hard drugs or not, there is no shortage of respected community members who have stood up for the laneway boys in the aftermath of this raid.
It’s wise to be cautious with taking police reports to media at face value and instead look between the lines. It is standard police practice the world over to cast a large net and shake it to see what comes out. Not much consideration is given to any innocent people who get caught up, or whether genuinely guilty people’s crimes are exaggerated.
UPDATE: The amount of cannabis seized was in he order of 5kg, and the reported Street value of $1 million is wildly exaggerated. A realistic figure would be between $20,000 and $50,000.
Metadata – what does it capture:
Subpoenas
Information held by Australian service providers, and sometimes international services can be subpoenaed. Example, copyright cases.
National Security Agency
NSA have several mechanisms for tracking/collecting data. The main methods are Internet Backbone interception and PRISM
Warrant Canary
Like a canary used by miners, if the canary dies, there is a gas leak. Canaries will die from gas before humans, so a dead canary is advanced notice for humans of a gas leak. Likewise, a warrant canary is a statement regularly updated by a provider indicating they have not been subject to a government warrant. If the statement is out of date or missing, it means the company has been subject to warrant, and therefore your data held by the company may no longer be secure.
Warrant canaries are issued because warrant requests usually legally require the company not reveal that they are subject to a warrant.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/warrant-canary-faq
TOR
Web browsing anonymity. IP address obfuscation. Slow, and can’t be used for torenting since torenting breaks the anonymity. Outbound nodes can be compromised.
https anywhere improves security by ensuring all traffic is encrypted.
VPN – Encrypts traffic between the user and the vpn proivder
VPN providers can be subpoenaed – look for vpn that doesn’t keep ip address logs.
Free vpn versus paid – pros and cons – Free VPN providers are less secure, unknown. Large providers are more secure, but more likely to be subject to warrant.
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en
Private chat/call/email
Wickr – goes through central provider but end to end encryption – they don’t know what you are sending.
Wick use Warrant Cannaries.
RISEUP – https secure email. Not encrypted at provider, but provider is trustworthy. They can still be subpoenaed. Riseup use a Warrant Canary.
https://help.riseup.net/
TextSecure, now Redphone – recommended by Snowden – encrypted, but some metadata can leak.
Skype – encrypted, but can be captured if Skype has been subject to warrant (whereas wickr data is fully encrypted end point to end point). Also meta data is leaky. No warrant canary – owned by MS so part of PRISM
All above chat/call methods rely on third parties
Mesoporous silica particle
The consumer and environment advocacy group Friends of the Earth has commissioned independent research that confirms nanoparticles of titanium dioxide and Silica in a range of food products. Foods known to be affected so far include M&Ms, Nestlé Coffee Mate Creamer, Old El Paso Taco Mix and Woolworths Homebrand White Sauce.
In light of statements by Food Safety Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) given to Parliament that food products containing these ingredients will not be sold until they have been subject to safety testing and pre-market approval, there is concern that the problem is unquantified and many more foods may contain nanoparticles.
FOE Press Release available here: Independent testing finds illegal and potentially harmful nanoparticles in common food products.
Further evidence that the government have a head in the sand approach to nanoparticles in food can be found on the Department of Health (via National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme, NICNAS) website that claims “Reported uses of TiO2 nanoparticles in Australia are similar to the overseas uses — cosmetic and sunscreen products and surface coatings such as paint”. No mention of food. Without labelling requirements, and with the government denying the presence of nanoparticles, consumers are unable to decide to exercise caution in the consumption of foods containing nanoparticles.
Read the NICNAS Nanoparticle Report.
There are few safety studies available on the use of nanoparticles in food, but studies that have been done on nanoparticles point to potential carcinogenic affects, genotoxicity or immune system compromise. The report “Titanium dioxide nanoparticles: a review of current toxicological data” provides a review of current research. Part of the finding raises concern about pulmonary inflammation and lung cancers:
“Pulmonary inflammatory responses and lung cancers are the most important adverse effect observed in experimental animals due to TiO2 NP exposures. When only using realistic doses are considered, as in the case of some inhalation studies, inflammatory responses are still a prominent effect seen. ” http://www.particleandfibretoxicology.com/content/10/1/15
More research is needed before deciding on whether nanoparticles are safe for human consumption.
UPDATE: In response to the SMH article Nanotechnology Found in Popular Foods Despite Repeated Denials by Food Regulators, FSANZ has released this statement. The statement essentially amounts to “FSANZ and other international food regulatory agencies have not identified any health effect known to be associated with the use of nanoparticles of titanium dioxide and silica, following oral ingestion in foods”. They have also announced that a leading toxicologist will be undertaking a review into nanoparticles in food, with the final report expected to be published in late 2015 to early 2016.
Note: This article originally appeared in foodirradiationwatch.org, by the same author.
Anon Supporters
In Brisbane Thursday supporters of protesters arrested during G20 gathered outside the Magistrates Court to show solidarity with those facing charges. Their charges ranging from possession of a prohibited weapon (an innocent bystander in the Valley, no intent to protest, happened to have a sling shot in his backpack that someone had just given him), Possession of masks, and contravene Prohibited Persons conditions. Most elected to have the cases adjourned, with one arrestee choosing to have the matter dealt with on the spot receiving a small bond and no conviction recorded.
‘Anthony’ speaking to press after the hearing
The support rally was organised primarily by Anonymous Brisbane and Anonymous Galactic in solidarity with ‘Anthony’, an Anonymous protester who was arrested during the Saturday march for wearing an Anonymous mask and refusing to remove it when asked. Anthony intends to fight the charges, arguing that he had a lawful excuse to be in possession of a mask since it was being used as a form of political expression.
Under UN treaties to which Australia belongs, political expression and peaceful assembly without undue restrictions are considered rights.
Cairon O’Reilly talking to media
Even without relying on the Government to recognise it’s obligations under UN treaties (something that isn’t happening for asylum seekers or indigenous people), the G20 Act itself says that Prohibited Items can be legally carried or used if for a lawful purpose. And under the G20 Act, peaceful assemblies were deemed lawful even if no permission had been sought from the authorities. So protesters are demanding that the charges be dropped.
Supporters going in to court
Supporters for two Anarchists charged were also present as well as supporters of Cairon O’Reilly. Well known for his peaceful direct action protests, O’Reilly took advantage of his reputation in order to generate media coverage for his attempts to talk to US President Barack Obama about Chelsea Manning’s plight. During the G20, O’Reilly intentionally contravened a Prohibited Persons order by being present in a Declared Area.
Protesters are saying that the G20 laws were inappropriate because they restricted freedom of assembly and that their use represents adoption of what is likely to become a slippery slope towards ever increasing restrictions in the future.
Protesters speak to Briscan Legal Support.
After their hearings, some of the arrestees spoke with the Briscan Activist Support Team, who are offering advice and assistance to people caught up in the G20 laws.
The G20 circus brings with it some expected impositions. And despite the misgivings many people have about those impositions, most people just accept it as par for the course of hosting a large international meeting such as the G20. Public transport disruptions, road closures, increased police powers in certain zones and so on. But it’s all predicated on safety and security right? After all the special act brought in to give police increased powers and to define special security zones is called the G20 Safety and Security Act 2013. Some worrying powers come with this new one use Act. Presumption against bail, enhanced stop and search powers, prohibited items and prohibited persons lists being just some of the provisions. But surely it’s all about increased safety of citizens and G20 delegates. Isn’t it? The fact that loud hailers, masks, and banners larger than one by two metres, all of which are standard fare at protests under the current Peaceful Assembly Act (which is suspended in the G20 security zones), are listed as prohibited items under the G20 Safety and Security Act, isn’t an ominous sign of the suppression of protester’s voices and their ability to have an impact. It’s just that the police want a little extra control, to make sure everything goes smoothly.
Maybe. But there have been some interesting developments around town that make one wonder if the Government, and it’s agent the Queensland Police Force, aren’t very interested in keeping anti-G20 sentiment to a very minimum. In reports from protest groups, they have been told by Police Liaison Officers that despite protest group’s assemblies being registered and being lawful assemblies under the G20 Act, and despite the G20 Act specifying that carrying of prohibited items is acceptable if being used for a lawful purpose, carrying of loudhailers, masks and large banners are will not be tolerated. So there seems to be a messaging disconnect there. Yes we support your right to protest, but we are going to take away your most significant tools of protest.
It’s not only within the G20 Act that this action by police to suppress the voice of protest has been observed. Recently we heard a rumour that police had forbidden Office Works to print any material submitted by customers relating to G20. I spoke to Kate, a manager at the CBD branch of Office Works yesterday to clarify what the situation was. I expected to hear that this was only a rumour:
Max: I am following up rumours that office works have been instructed by police not to print any material related to g20.
Kate: Yes that’s right.
Max: Interesting.
Max: From what level of the police service did that instruction come?
Kate: I don’t know, it was a specific request. The other thing is we actually reserve any right refuse to print any material at all that may give offence to any person, we reserve the right to refuse to print any material that might be deemed offensive. We have been specifically instructed not to print any anti-g20 material, but other than that we can refuse to print any material we deem may be offensive.
Max: Okay, that’s fair enough I understand that.
Max: Have you specifically deemed any and all g20 material offensive or you’ve not been even given the opportunity to determine that because you can’t print any at all?
Kate: No, anything particularly relating to G20, we’re not printing.
Max: Can I ask have you ever received any other request from police about certain material that shouldn’t be printed?
Kate: That I am aware of no, but I have no doubt that it has happened in the past. It’s just because of the political nature of it I assume. The police request was more to do with the fact that the thing was being used for vandal activity and it wasn’t okay. In each store we are not printing it because it could potentially cause offence to a person or persons but if there was a particular store which has been instructed not to print the material based on the fact it was being used for vandalism essentially.
Max: Was the police instruction that all G20 material was viewed as being related to vandalism or was it they didn’t want any of it printed just in case?
Kate: I’m not sure of the exact instruction, but we as a store are opting to not print any specific G20 material based on the fact that it will cause offence to a person or a persons.
It seems that what has happened is that police have issued an instruction about a particular incident, which may relate to the Cairns Grandmother Myra Gold who was refused service at an Office Works in Cairns. That refusal followed an incident in which MS Gold was arrested for posting G20 stickers and charged with vandalism. According to Office Works Cairns, police told the store not to print any more G20 stickers. Police denied any instructions had been made to businesses.
Kate from Brisbane CBD Office Works seemed pretty clear that police had specifically instructed the store not to print G20 materials, whilst also affirming that the store itself wasn’t interested in printing any G20 material regardless of the police instruction.
Community group BrisCAN recently also had service refused at Office Works recently. The material in this case was a Zine calling for alternatives to G20. Read it for yourself and judge whether the material is offensive or could be construed as offensive: G20 Peoples’ Zine. Unlike stickers or a poster, a Zine is not used in acts of vandalism but is distributed more like a newspaper.
Brisbane Airport has recently rejected two billboards sought to be placed by WWF and Transparency International. The G20 targeted billboards were deemed “too political”. The WWF billboard draws attention to the need for action on Climate Change, while the Transparency International billboard calls for the G20 to act on dirty money and corruption. The Airport has ensured the public that they only rejected the billboards because they wish the airport to remain a partisan area, however this claim is weakened by the presence of the Reef facts billboard in the airport foyer.
The Reef facts campaign uses a dubious reading of statistics to reassure the public that it’s Barrier Reef dredging operations are safe to the reef. As pointed out in this Sydney Morning Herald article, the Reef Facts website is misleading. The website explains that the primary cause of loss of coral cover 60km out to sea is natural weather events, but these figures don’t apply for loss of coral cover closer in to shore were dredging occurs. Further, it is claimed that “No scientific study has blamed ports or shipping for coral loss” and while this is true, it is because there has been very little monitoring in that area.
An example of the Reef Facts billboard, similar to that displayed at BAC
The Reef Facts billboard clearly has a political agenda: to convince people that Abbott Point dredging is safe. It’s a political campaign billboard. It seems clear that the Brisbane Airport Corporation is interested in currying favour with it’s landlord, the Australian Federal government.
These examples (and there are more) singly don’t add up to a concerted effort at censorship, but collectively they do have that affect. The government is driving a pro mining, pro economic growth agenda that sees any dissenters as troublemakers to be silenced. With 60 year old Grandmothers such as Myra Gold being arrested for vandalism, corporations like BAC hosting government propaganda and not allowing right of reply, by enforcing unnecessary security provisions that prevent protesters from reaching visual or aural range of the people who they want to hear their message, and by intimidating businesses into not providing services to anyone who wants to share a message that is contrary to government opinion, there is a proxy censorship in place.
Fortunately in Brisbane the community rarely takes this lying down. Until or if the government decides to practice outright censorship, it’s still possible to get a message across. Here are just two examples:
Melbourne Street approaching West End – Oxfam Billboard
Uniting Church West End – G20 People Before Profit – Photo Robin Taubenfeld
